Another species emerged today in my balcony. This time from a larvae found in September last year. The species name is Papilio machaon (Linnaeus, 1758). It is found in all of Europe but their numbers are declining due mostly to human activities…

An imaging run in the Comana Woods with some astro-fiends. Good skies for this location, but some technical difficulties for my imaging gear. The hand-made dithering was rather poor for this session. Looking already for the next one 😉

First targets: the Leo Trio of galaxies M-65, M-66 and NGC 3628. For this target I’ve hand-selected 350 frames from around 420, each a 20 second exposure at Gain 400 and Gamma 60. Again, the poor dithering almost ruined the shot completely…

I’ve been waiting to take a better glimpse (photo-glimpse) at this object for some time. My earlier test-shot showed that with only a handful of frames and short exposures, the stars of this galaxy could be easily revealed. So it should be no problems for longer exposures. This time the camera was the ASI 1600MM, with its intrinsic bright-star artifacts. I did manage however to get some more aesthetics into the frame by placing a home-made spike-maker in front of the objective.

Only 10 frames for this shot, but a lot of faint and small background galaxies are detectable…

Spring is coming, and the first sign was observed in my balcony where I keep a few cocoons of a lovely medium-sized moth. A single female emerged today from one such cocoon. The species name is Saturnia pavoniella (Scopoli, 1763), a moth occurring in Europe. In Romania, I’ve found it in three locations already, in almost all the evolution stages: eggs. caterpillars and more recently as adults. It frequently comes to light during the colder nights of March-April, and sometimes in May, depending on altitude.

This species is not yet threatened, but it seems that its range is changing in recent years.

Also, the male. The following shots are of a freshly emerged male from March 10.

Just playing a bit with some magnets, iron filings, and a piece of paper. I’ve wanted to take a few shots of this practical experiment for some years now. Finally I had the inspiration to do it..

All shots are negatives of the originals, since to my eyes, the magnetic field lines show better this way.

And a comparison of some homemade magnetic field lines and the aspect of some sunspot groups in H-alpha light. Note the similarities. They might not be the best examples, but they are my only ones showing similar structures on the Sun.